"Every bit of self-respect I had is now gone after..."

Horrific experience at Lister for my first and ONLY baby boy in October this year. My waters had broken and they told me to come in so they could check(?), when I got there with hubby they examined me after 3 hours and said they hadn't broken so they sent me up to the ward and sent hubby home as I wasn't in labour yet but they wanted to monitor me. Sure enough, half an hour after he left, my contractions started- in excrutiating pain and pretty much left on my own and in the dark trying not to disturb the other women on the ward. Tried telling the midwives but they weren't listening to me and told me to get a bath/shower. I could barely walk and after getting undressed and having the most awful shower I have ever had in my life- could barely get dressed again. Eventually at 4am, I rung my hubby and told him to come back as it was so bad, he did and were upset that he had returned so I had to scream at them how much pain I was in! Midwife FINALLY put me on the monitor and they realised babys heart rate was dropping. Awful thing is that the midwife said 'You're 38 weeks?' I laughed and said 'NO! I'm 10 days overdue!!!' Ended up having a very manic emergency c-section. Post-natal care was horrific, I couldn't even reach for my own baby after my hubby was gone as I couldn't feel my legs and the midwife wouldn't change my babys nappy. Found the whole thing depressing, lonely and miserable. To top it all off, i now have PND and PTSD. I would not recommend Lister hospital to anyone.

Responses

We're so disappointed that this was your experience, because so much has changed since last October when the new maternity unit was created and opened in full. If you are willing, we know that our head midwife would be very willing to speak with you to understand what went wrong and why in terms of the care you received at the Lister. Whilst that won't undo what happened, it allows us to say sorry and make sure that such experiences do not happen for other women. If you are willing for someone to get in touch with you, then just drop us an e-mail to generalenquiries.enh-tr@nhs.net.